A beautiful day in the neighborhood
by zipadeea
Summary: In which Steve and Peter learn that the best way to get through a bad situation is together. And to avoid collapsing buildings. And that concussions are terrible, terrible things. Written because I love these two, and I really needed them in a fic together. Rated M for language.


A/N: It's always been pretty easy for me to say that Captain America was, without a doubt, my favorite Avenger. The underdog with a heart of gold who stands up for the little guy, loves his friends til the end of the line, and is super turned on by strong independent women (whom he RESPECTS). Like seriously, there's nothing about Steve Rogers not to love. But, here's the thing, then Marvel had to go cast Tom "boyish good looks, puppy dog eyes, and a smile with the light of a thousand suns" Holland as Spider-man and create the John Hughes of superhero movies and I just…I'm conflicted. Spider-man who actually acts like a high school kid and whose entire motivation is "make me an Avenger, please, Mr. Stark!" is a Spider-man I can relate to and love.

Thankfully for me, this a very minor problem, and like a mother with her children I shall resolve to love my favorite Avengers equally (because Peter is an Avenger, I understand the importance of SPOILER him turning Tony down at the end of the movie and I love him for it, but he's an Avenger). So, without further ado, I'm gonna stick my two favorite fictional New Yorkers together, pretend all the shit from Civil War has been magically resolved, and whump the heck out of both of them. I'm so cruel Enjoy!

Warning- there's a lot of cursing in this. Sorry if you're turned off by it, but in my head Steve has quite the potty mouth, especially when he's concussed…Please read and review!

000

"Captain….Captain America…..Cap-Cap—CAP!"

The first thing Steve hears is someone screaming by his ear. The first thing he feels is a hammer rhythmicly landing in a steady beat on the top of his head. The first thing he does is try to lift his hand and bat the hammer wielding psycopath away from his head.

He does not succeed.

He groans instead.

"Cap?" Steve hears a small voice question. "Cap? You awake? Mr. Rogers?"

Steve groans again, partially in pain, okay, 95% in pain, 5% in exasperation because, really? Mr. Rogers is his (very dead) father.

"Mr. Rogers?" the small voice asks again. This time Steve hears the pained edge to it, the desperation, "Mr. Rogers, please wake up. It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood…" The voice singsongs at the end, before dissolving into mad giggles, which end with a choked sob.

"Shit, shit this is so bad. The is so, so bad. Captain America is dying, I'm using the most important American artifact since the Declaration of Independence as a fucking umbrella, and I'm pretty sure my concussion has a concussion. Karen, did you reach Mr. Stark yet?"

Steve's getting slightly worried about this kid because A) he sounds like he's twelve, and B) Steve's pretty certain Karen doesn't exist, based on her lack of response. The kid seems to think that she does though, when his question to the nonexistent lady is followed up by a screeched "FUCK!" at a pitch Steve can only compare to dog whistles and the voice of Glinda the good witch.

"You're too fucking young to be using language like that, Pete," Steve whispers out, because all at once, despite the cold, despite the pain in his side and the hammer continuing to fall on his head, Steve remembers the voice. It's Peter Parker, from Queens, Stark's resident "intern". The web-slinging kid who'd promised to introduce Steve to Star Wars this weekend, who cheekily grinned as he'd listed Captain America as a source on his history paper last week.

"Oh, thank you, God."

"I go by 'Steve' actually, but you're welcome." Steve hears a surprised burst of laughter before Peter reels it back in. Steve has yet to open his eyes. He's not sure that he can.

"Steve," Peter says, before huffing out a huge breath, "Steve, where are you hurt?" Peter asks quietly, and Steve finds it kind of an odd question, because the kid is _right_ next to him, but Steve can still feel blood dripping down his head, along his right side, and out of his _ears_ of all things, and yeah, it sounds like the kid is hurt, too, but he woke up first, and why hasn't he at least tried to patch Steve up even a little bit?

Steve hears something around them groan, hears the kid let out a horrible whimper, and realizes something much worse than his bleeding is going on right now.

"Steve, _please_ ," Peter begs, at which point Steve open his eyes.

For a moment, Steve is pretty certain he's gone blind. He knows he suffered a pretty terrible blow to the back of his head at this point, and when he opens his eyes everything is black, black, black.

But then, as Steve hears his own breathing begin to pick up in a panic, Steve hears a sharp "Cap!" right in front of his face, and the whites of two big eyes are a foot an a half from his nose.

"Oh, thank you, God," Steve breaths out, because the last time a blow to the head left him blind, it was immediately followed by the soundtrack of Peggy Carter's staticky voice begging for him to come back as he surrendered himself to an icy, watery grave.

Not an experience he ever wishes to repeat.

"It's 'Peter' actually, but you're welcome," Peter says, his white teeth shining in the dark like his eyes, and Steve lets out a huff of what might pass as laughter. Even that makes his head spin.

Peter is blob above him, but now that Steve knows where his face his, Steve's eyes are adjusting to the darkness. Peter is leaned over him, his mask pulled up, hiding his hair away. He's bent oddly, all haphazard, but from what he can tell, there isn't any blood on Peter's face, just dirt and grime, so Steve'll count that as a win.

And yet—"Pete, your arms. Are your arms, are they…?" Steve trails off, worried, because he can't see them, can't feel them, and Peter is _right there_ and it's pretty scrunched up wherever they are and yeah, maybe he's whining now, but there's a lot of blood coming out of his body, and his own arms don't seem to have enough strength to cooperate at the moment.

"My arms are just dandy, Steve, working just like arms should," Peter says, and Steve can hear his smirk, can tell that somewhere in that sentence there is a sick, dark joke that Steve does not yet understand. "It's the leg that's giving me a bit of trouble at the moment. Head, too, I think. Shit, Aunt May's gonna kill me, this is my third concussion in two months, she's not gonna let me join the gymnastics team at this rate…"

Steve automatically attempts to roll his eyes and lets out a barely stifled gasp. Peter still hears it, of course he still hears it. Peter's the only person Steve knows who has even better senses than Steve.

"Steve what's wrong? I know, I mean, I'm sorry I haven't helped you out yet, but I'm a bit tied up at the moment."

Steve swallows down bile and the taste of the chili that he had for lunch and is now intensely regretting. "Got a cut on my side, I think. Somethin's goin' on with my ears…and my head. My head's real…" Steve trails off again, unsure that there's a word big or appropriate enough to encompass the dilemma that is his hammering head.

"Okay, okay, bad head injury. Not good. We can deal with this, though. We can do this. We have to do this. Okay," Peter says, psyching himself up. "Okay. First things first. Stay awake, Steve."

"I'm woke," Steve grumbles.

"I don't care if you're 'woke' idiot, I need you to stay awake," Peter, snaps back, and in that moment it sounds so much like something Bucky, his Bucky, would say that Steve really, really wants to cry.

He's pretty sure a few tears do actually slip down his cheeks. Peter doesn't see.

(Maybe he does. He doesn't say anything).

Instead, Peter slowly manuevers himself even closer to Steve's head, and something clangs, and dust begins to fall, and Steve is so fucking confused it's making his head hurt even worse.

"Karen, turn on your lights," Peter says.

Pause.

"You're shitting me," Peter responds. Steve hopes that Karen lives in the suit like Jarvis used to, but even Jarvis ended up becoming a real boy like Pinochio and Steve really needs to take a nap and stop watching Disney movies.

"Okay, so unfortunately no lights-,"

"My belt," Steve says, "there's a flashlight if you can reach it. Right side." And Steve feels his face color with shame because his right hand is literally right next to the flashlight pouch but he just, he can't get it. His hands can barely make the fist he's forcing them into right now. And every time he clenches his hands, a jolt runs up his spine and into his head and lightning joins the hammers and Steve has a weird vision of Thor doing a tap dance inside his head.

"Okay," Peter says softly, which Steve finds odd. He figured the kid would be pretty pleased that they could have some light wherever they are, find it funny that sometimes old school trumps flashy suits and artificial voices in your head who sometimes become real people. "Okay, just a sec. I got this. I got this."

It takes Steve a moment to realize that Peter is not reassuring Steve, but himself.

"You got this," Steve says softly, and honestly Steve doesn't know that Peter does have this, but he knows that he needs to hear it. They are both quiet for a moment, the only noises around them the odd creaking of metal and dust falling, and not for the first time Steve wonders where the fuck they are and what the fuck happened to get them there.

"Yeah, I do," Peter eventually responds, slowly, slowly, drawing the flashlight out of the pouch by Steve's hand. Peter gives Steve's forearm a brush and a light squeeze as he picks the flashlight up. Steve is pretty sure Peter will never understand how much, in that moment, he appreciates it.

This is 2017, Steve is 98% sure they weren't in a plane crash, and he is not alone. Not that he's happy a fifteen year old got stuck in this shithole with him, but company is good.

"Okay, Steve, shut your eyes. I'm gonna point the light up, so it's not on you, but I'm pretty sure it's still gonna hurt like hell until you get used to it." Steve complies.

"Are they shut?" Peter asks, and Steve grunts out the affirmative because nodding his head is _not_ happening right now, and Peter probably wouldn't see it anyway.

"Okay," and the world behind Steve's eyelids goes from black to a soft orange and _fuck_ it hurts, and Thor's started playing the drums along with smashing his lightning hammer in his head.

" _Oh my God,_ " Steve hears Peter breathe out, " _Oh my GOD,_ " he says again, and Steve thinks Peter's about to cry.

So of course, he opens his eyes.

It's like being hit by a freight train.

Once his vision comes back, and he stops making gargling noises, Steve finally settles enough to look around and take stock of the situation. At first, he thinks they may be in a cave, perhaps they were kidnapped or something of the sort. But then he sees steel girders and drywall dust and glass shattered around them and realizes, in a brief moment of clarity, that a building has collapsed on top of them.

A fucking huge building based on the looks of it, and the lack of rescue thus far.

"Steve," Peter chokes out, and Steve finally looks up at him. The kid's leaning almost entirely over Steve, leg stuck out at a horribly wrong angle along Steve's side. His face is bruised and dirty, but not bloody, but Steve already knew that. The shocking thing is above.

Peter's arms are both up, locked at the elbows above his and Steve's heads, holding Steve's sheild like it's an umbrella.

Holding back a fucking wall of debris that's just waiting to swallow them whole.

"Peter!" Steve barks out in alarm, and, with a rush of adrenalin, he tries to sit up, to help Peter, who has been holding back the rocks and saving their lives for God knows how long.

"No! Steve stay down!" Peter screams. It is then that Steve realizes Peter's been whispering to him the whole time they've been down there. The whole time. Because Peter, who _understands_ the pitfalls of having enhanced senses, has been considerate and conscientious and kind to Steve's aching head.

The combination of Peter's screaming now, and the attempting to move, and the rapid adrenalin rise and crash, has Steve's vision going completely white.

When he comes back again, it is to sobs.

"Steve, Steve, please, oh God, please don't be dead, don't be, please, please, please-,"

"Peter, _stop_ ," he says, once he can find the words, once he can gather the strength to open his eyes again. The lights are off.

"Steve, don't get up. Whatever you do, don't move. Just don't."

"Why?" Steve asks, because he has to, of course he does. "You can't hold that up alone, Pete, and who knows how long it'll take for them to f-find us." Steve stutters by the end because even talking hurts now, and shit this is so, so bad.

"Yes, I can. I can and I will. I'm stronger than you, you know. Mr. Stark says."

Steve knows a deflection when he hears one. He also knows, at this moment, Peter probably needs a distraction more than he does.

"I can stop a helicopter in midair."

Steve can hear the smile in Peter's response, "I turned a plane full of Avengers shit in midair with my webs and landed it on Coney Island."

"Touche, kid."

000

They do that for a while, trade barbs and war stories, somehow dissolving into Disney movies:

"The Fox and the Hound is your favorite? God, Steve, that's just depressing. Have you even seen the Lion King yet? Put that thing on your list"

And baseball teams:

"The Mets! Are you j-joking? Dodgers all the way, kid."

Before finally:

"What do you miss most, Steve? About your old life, I mean?" And on a normal day, Steve probably would've walked out of the room to a question like that, especially from a teenager he's known maybe a month, not counting the biggest disaster in Berlin since that wall went up. It's a question his SHIELD mandated therapist tried to get him to answer for about four years. SHIELD honest to God fell before that man got his answer.

And there are so many things he could say. Bucky, his best friend Bucky, Peggy, the Commandos, camaraderie, patriotism, the slower pace of life. Brooklyn, his Brooklyn the way he knew it, and newspapers, and the ease of knowing you were doing the right thing. The way Sundays used to matter, and God wasn't always a bad word, and people didn't find you superfluous and naïve when you prayed; they just prayed with you.

And Christmas trees with candles and the sound of a full train as it pulled into the station and the way people used to get so dressed up to travel because they wanted to look their best wherever they were going. Finding a dime in the sewer and spending the afternoon at the picture show, and buying a bag of popcorn with the nickle you had left.

"My ma," Steve answers, "I miss my ma so damn much it hurts. She's the best p-person I ever knew." And, to his horror, Steve starts sniffling, "She's the only reason I lived s-so long, I shoulda died as a kid. She kept me goin'." He sniffs again. "I'm just glad she didn't live to see me die. N-no parents should bury their kid."

Of course, because Steve is an insensitive idiot who, on a team full of mostly adult orphans, forgets that Peter has a parent very much alive. Peter starts to cry.

"May's gonna be all alone, Steve. All alone. And you're gonna die too, and it's gonna be all my fault. I'm so s-sorry." And the ceiling's beginning to shake because Peter's arms, after at least an hour and a half, by Steve's very skewed calculation, of holding the debris back, are beginning to finally fail.

"Nope," Steve says simply, new energy entering him with Peter's despair. "Nope, that's not happening. C'mere."

Even in the dark, Steve can read the confusion in Peter's barely visible eyes.

"What?"

"All right, I'm gonna lift my arms," Steve says, and he does, slowly, slowly, and his side _tears_ and it hurts but he doesn't say a word about it. Soon, Steve's arms are extended all the way upward, and the hammers are still pounding and the lightning is still dancing, but it's been so long that Steve's learned to live with it, just like he did with asthma and Bucky's snoring and the twenty-first century.

"Now lay down next to me and give me half."

"Steve! No! You don't get it, your head-,"

"Won't matter if we're smashed, Spidey. Give me half."

And slowly, slowly, because that's the story of their lives now, Peter transfers the weight of the shield to Steve. And holy shit, how the hell has the kid held back all of this, by himself for the past two hours! Because Steve feels like he's dying holding this thing up, like he's Atlas with the sky, doomed to bear the weight until another comes along.

But together, he and Peter will survive.

They have to.

000

They stop talking after that. Well, Steve stops. Peter says things, mostly positive, encouraging things, sometimes expletives, to keep them both motivated.

Meanwhile, Steve feels the pool of blood around him growing bigger, and the pounding in his head begins to diminish as the world becomes fuzzy and gray.

In one word: Bad.

Steve knows it is very, very bad.

"Peter," Steve finally gasps out, because his blood is gone and his face is white and there's still blood falling out of his ears, "Peter, did you see any way out of here?"

"What do you mean? No, this walls blocking everything for us, Steve. We can't get out."

"What if you checked? I think I can take it for a minute," Steve says, trying as hard as he can to sound nonchalant as he's gasping for breath.

But he's never been very nonchalant at all.

"I'm not moving, asshole. No sacrificing yourself for the kid. This wall falls, we go down together, got it?"

"Peter," Steve begs.

"No," Peter says fiercely, "If I get out this wall falls, because I know you care a hell of a lot more about me than you do yourself, and that's wrong, Steve. So if you give up, I die, too, got it?"

And that is that.

000

Ten minutes later, Steve no longer has a choice. His arms are shaking, his vision's gone completely gray, and he can barely hear Peter any more, and he's about to apologize because he listened to Peter, really he did, and he doesn't want to give up, but his body's going to fail him way before his mind. Before his heart. Just like it did before the serum.

Which, of course, is the moment voices burst to life in Peter's suit lady mask and a green and a red blur come streaking into Steve's gray vision. And then, everything goes black.

000

Steve wakes up to a hospital. The smell of bleach, the scratchy sheets, the white, white, ceiling. His head hurts, but it's vague, like the hammer's been replaced by a pool noodle. Still there, but annoying, not hurtful.

He's pretty sure he's on drugs, and they're working, because everything is soft and feels nice, and he knows there's a lazy sort of smile on his face when he takes in his surroundings. The smile grows when he notices Peter, asleep by his bedside, casted leg stretched out on Steve's bed and gray hoody on over his hospital gown.

Steve's head feels _tight_ of all things, not super painful, but a bit like a rubberband's been wrapped around it. He lifts his hand to find, not hair, but a turban of bandages, and knows instinctively that his head has been shaved.

It must've been a pretty hard hit.

"Yeah it was," a voice answers, and Steve realizes he's said the last part aloud. Tony Stark stands in the doorway to his room, the barest hint of a fond smile on his lips as he takes in the sleeping Peter.

"Good to see you up, Cap," Tony says, which, honestly, is pretty big coming from him. Sure, they've got their truce, but they definitely haven't been friends since the Accords.

"What happened?" Steve asks, and finally, finally, Steve gets the answer. Alien invasion in Boston. Skyscraper collapsed. Peter had been stuck at the tail end of the building's evacuation. Steve, apparently, swooped in at the last minute with his shield to cover him.

"Oh," Steve says softly. Because Peter's guilt makes a bit more sense. Completely stupid, Steve chose to go in, but it makes sense in a Peter Parker kind of way.

(in a Steve Rogers sort of way, too, not that he'll admit it).

"The way Peter explains it, a boulder swiped the back of your head on the way down. Your skull was cracked like an egg, Cap. You could see it through the top of your head. Fluid from around your brain was dripping out of your ears."

So it wasn't blood.

Tony fortunately gets the trash can to Steve before anything comes up.

Unfortunately, the retching wakes up the sleeping spider.

"Oh, thank you, God," Peter whispers out, ducking his head to hide what Steve thinks may be tears.

"I go by 'Steve' actually." Tony fucking snorts at that.

"You're an asshole, Captain America."

"Can we watch Star Wars now?" Because before Boston, Steve now remembers, before the building, before shields and dying and spiders, Steve and Peter were supposed to watch Star Wars and eat Pad Thai and larb so Steve could finally, finally cross those things off his list. Peter nods, and Tony goes to grab a Stark Pad from the table in the corner. Tony hands it to him, and suddenly a look of wonder crosses Peter's face.

"Holy shit, Steve, do you know who Darth Vader is?"

"What? No?" Peter looks ready to wet himself when, "Vater, isn't that 'father' in German?"

"You're the worst, Captain America."

Tony laughs so hard he cries.


End file.
